Under license

Air Classics, Jan 2003

DUE TO TREMENDOUS DEMAND FOR THE ADVANCED FIGHTER, LICENSE AGREEMENTS WERE ISSUED TO TWO OTHER AVIATION MANUFACTURERS

The Navy quickly realized that, even at full, all-out production, Vought would not be able to deliver as many Corsairs as the Navy and American Allies needed, so license contracts were drawn up with Brewster Aeronautical Corporation and Goodyear. The two companies were to produce widely different products. Goodyear became a model of aircraft production efficiency and churned out thousands of high-quality copies at a rate that made American mass production techniques justly famous, while Brewster built a shoddy product that was eventually terminated with a Congressional investigation.

Brewster, builder of some of the world's worst airplanes including the Bermuda and Buffalo, set up two plants for Corsair production (using the designation F3A-1) but built just over 700 Corsairs and these machines were delivered behind schedule and were of inferior quality. In the investigation, the fact was brought up that German agents may well have been at work on the Brewster production lines and this might have been true but no hard facts were ever revealed (German agents had been captured in Long Island after having been landed by U-boat). One Marine pilot remembers that if he and his squadron mates saw the HA designation on a Corsair, it would be avoided. Rumors had circulated through the squadron of wings coming off of Brewster-built machines and, in fact, many of the HAs were red-lined for top speed and prohibited from the more violent aerobatic maneuvers.

In a fit of international cooperation, American shipped many of the Brewster Corsairs to Britain while the ones remaining in the States were assigned to training squadrons where hapless students would have to cope with this monument to bureaucratic bungling.